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Tomboy

Synopsis

A French family with two daughters, 10-year-old Laure and 6-year-old Jeanne, moves to a new neighborhood during the summer holidays. With her tomboy ways, Laure is immediately mistaken for a boy by the local kids and passes herself off as Michael.

Tomboy is that type of film that gets better the more you think about it, and I sure have been thinking about it. While watching it I found myself getting a little bored in spots which is odd really because I tend to really like slow paced films that take their time with characters. This one, though, spent altogether too much time going between exactly two sets: kids playing and the familial apartment. Back to kids playing, back to the apartment. This went on for so long, probably the entire film now that I think about it, that I got a little fed up. Having said that, I am so glad I didn't fall asleep because there was something almost…

A family of four (mother, father and two daughters with a third on the way) move to a new village where the oldest daughter is keen to make some friends on her first day. This group of children, however, don’t get to know her as Laure, but as Mickäel: the pseudonym under which she hides the fact that she is a girl as she is already masked by a boyish appearance. Zoé Héran - playing the main character, appearing in almost every take during the eighty minutes runtime - is ordered to perform one of the most difficult and vulnerable roles possible and seldom have I seen a child this age nailing such a demanding part with this much subtlety…

Tomboy is a French coming-of-age drama from Water Lilies director, Célina Sciamma, about a young girl pretending to be a boy. Whilst the film naturally raises questions about gender and sexuality it is less interested in finding answers and more in documenting the problems that arise from such lies (first love, going swimming, toilet issues etc.) particularly when the lies begin to escalate. It is a slight but perfectly formed feature, small in scale but sweet and intimate. The film was shot over a short summer period and the film is bathed in perpetual sunlight evoking memories of the endless summers of childhood. Although the story could have leant itself to a more sensationalist style, Tomboy is pleasingly grounded in a familiar reality. The characters are all totally believable and the natural performances are pitch perfect.

An incredibly subtle and minimalist film, Tomboy hands nothing over to the audience. Dialogue is scant and never expository, themes are covertly handled, and if you don't watch closely, you'll likely miss some important bits.

It's good then, that Fournier's cinematography is aesthetically appealing. The bright, sunny rays and resplendent colour scheme evokes feelings of memory - you always remember stuff vividly, those hazy summers where most of your social life occurred. This gives the film a very childlike manner to it, apt since, well, if you didn't know, it's a film about kids.

And if that's all you know, good. Know no more except it's about a girl who pretends to be a boy. Go in blind. Plot is…

In Tomboy, Céline Sciamma directs a simple story of a young girl’s delicate passage to adolescence with grace and gentleness. Its plot tackles the theme of gender identity and its complexity without being too didactic. Relationships between characters grow out organically and no sudden epiphanies ever occur thanks to the matter-of-fact tone. This is a serene film of a child’s self-discovery of sexuality that I enjoyed very much so.

The playful title card (which bears a striking resemblance to Pierrot Le Fou by the way) establishes the story’s prevalent color juxtaposition between blue and red that symbolizes gender ambiguity. This clever masculine/feminine palette motif is peppered throughout, appearing in clothing and even in the background. The film’s focus is on…

French film about a young couple (with two kids and another on the way) who move to a new town, and as their 10 year old daughter Laure meets the neighborhood kids she discovers that they are mostly boys. On the spur of the moment she introduces herself as Mickäel, and since she's got short hair and an undetermined physique she gets away with it. But as with most lies, things get more complicated and harder to manage as time goes by.

Céline Sciamma's quiet and gentle film deals with some interesting questions about gender identity and adolescence in general, and it's all done in a very believable and sensitive way. The film perfectly captures what it's like to be…

An intimate and understated little character study feels weirdly natural and schematic at the same time. The performances Sciamma elicits are all wonderfully pure and unforced especially from the lead. Sciamma's direction is unfussy and observational with an eye for compositions that give the audience a sense of vérité. The laid-back direction and relative lack of major incident give the film an engrossing tenor in which the unsaid is more telling than the verbal. With that said, the extent of the spareness of the script can leave the feeling of emotional passiveness. It left me at a certain remove when I wanted a deeper look. Still a quiet and tender tale of confused identity at a particularly versatile age. 3.5/5

Award winning coming-of-age drama Tomboy tells a sensitive story through a hugely talented young cast.

Ten-year-old Laure is moving house to a new town with her father, pregnant mother and adorable little sister. It’s still the summer holidays and Laure quickly makes friends with the kids in the neighbourhood. However they don’t know her as Laure but rather as the boy next door, Mickäel.

In the first few scenes, we ourselves are unsure as to whether the family have two little girls or one of each and it doesn’t seem to bother the family that their eldest likes to have her hair like a boy, dress like a boy and play with the boys, but they do show their surprise…

I've always been very interested in the subject of gender and sex, which is a huge part of why I really really like this film. It explores the ideas of what makes a 'boy' or a 'girl', and the often frustratingly constricting and arbitrary lines in society and biology between this or that. I do wish it had gone a bit further into transgender issues, but for an hour and thirty minutes it does a wonderful job of portraying the confusion and turbulence of an 8-year-old figuring her-/himself out.

Tomboy is lovely both conceptually and visually. The actors play the characters beautifully, especially Zoé Héran as the protagonist; really tugs at your heartstrings in spite of all the blunders and…

tender and playful, yet emotionally stirring when it needs to be. thought this was going to be more about being transgender but its only about what a gender has to perform at the ages of 6 - 10, as proved by the ending which kind of disappointed me. but it's really gorgeously shot, with obvious symbolism to the nature vs nurture argument of gender, and zoe heran is reeeeeeally good as a confused child. and i loved watching all the children play together.